A Thousand Sweet Kisses
by NessieGG
Summary: Actually, 30. SpikeJulia snippets written for 30 Kisses. Sometimes, a kiss is the only thing to remind them they're alive... [Complete!]
1. Time To Look

Hey, guys, Nessie here. (Previously Gundam Girl, the author of "Kites Without Strings.") This fic will be a compilation of shorter Spike/Julia fics, ranging from drabbles to one-shots. I'm writing these for the 30 Kisses community at Livejournal, so they're really just little doses of pairing salutes. I do hope you enjoy them as they come out, though, and please leave a review or two to let me know what you think. Thanks!

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Time To Look

By Nessie

Theme #1: Look Over Here

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He's by the window, leaning against the sill with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He's watching her, his garnet eyes are burning into the back of her blond head like fire through gold. She can feel him as though he is touching her, but he's six feet away – far enough away, she knows, that she shouldn't be feeling this warm, this eager. Goosebumps are rising beneath her sleeves and pants legs.

He wants her to look back at him, but she can't. She's caught between two men, both who love her, one a lover, and one that she loves. The lover sits right in front of her, carrying on as light a conversation as he can manage, while the one she loves waits from a distance, as patient as he can be for now.

The lover leaves to go see Mao, and Julia exhales suddenly when the door shuts behind Vicious.

"About time." The words are Spike's, and they don't surprise her. She turns around but before she can even settle her gaze on him, his lips are fused to hers, and he pulls her halfway out of her chair against him.

Sometimes she doesn't even have time to look his way before they both lose control. She clings to him, to the kiss, because soon he must retreat back to his window, back to six feet away, back to being the one she loves.


	2. What They Do

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What They Do

By Nessie

Theme #2: Letter/Note

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Sometimes Spike wants to go mad. His apartment is not scrupulously clean, nor is it positively filthy, and the balance between the two keeps him sane in times when he's just a bit too close to the edge. He survives with balance. Balance keeps him calm and alert. It keeps him alive.

But she – everything about her – threatens his balance. Her very presence kills his calm in an instant, while mere thoughts of her destroy his alertness. She is something that could ruin him.

He wishes he could tell her so. But the words turn to dust and become nothing as soon as he looks into her clear eyes or received her warm kisses.

There's pen and paper in his hands. The pen repeatedly taps the desk and the paper shakes like a leaf between his fingers. He wants to write it down, write it down and give it to her; let her know what she does to him, what they do to each other.

They are killing each other. She knows it, and he pretends not to. But sometimes he accepts it and then he goes mad, he's insane.

He's insane.

He can't write it. Because in the end, all he wants are those clear eyes and the kisses.

They are worth dying for.


	3. Goodbye Kiss

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Goodbye Kiss

By Nessie

Theme #3: Jolt!

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The night was dark and wet. It had stopped raining an hour ago, but there was a silver sheen leftover from the dampness that made Tharsus glow with an ethereal quality. The city was tense, like it knew something was about to happen.

This mission was no different from one Spike had ever received from the Red Dragons. And still he could see the worry in Julia's eyes as he headed for the door of her apartment. His hand was on the knob when he felt fingers clutch the back of his duster.

Turning back, he smiled down at the beautiful woman he loved. "It's okay, Julia."

"Be careful." It was all Julia ever said before he left, and it was all she would say now. Even so, Spike bent and kissed her tenderly on the forehead.

"He doesn't know," he promised. "He's on Titan. How could he?"

She smiled, but it was a weak effort and concern was still the brightest thing in her eyes. Spike tried to will it away with a longer, more meaningful goodbye kiss.

"See you tonight."

He left her apartment and stepped out of the building. He let the scent of the damp night energize him.

"Spike Spiegel?"

His head turned only a fraction of an inch, but apparently that was all that was needed. A boot came up, and Spike was able to make out the crest of an enemy syndicate on the blade that protruded from the toe of the shoe.

Blood added more wet to the ground beneath his feet. Spike fell back, his left eye feeling like it had turned completely to liquid.

Well, _that_ was one hell of a jolt.


	4. Content For Now

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Content For Now

By Nessie

Theme #4: Our Distance And That Person

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Julia had seen him the day before yesterday. On the run from the syndicate and because she was still protecting him from Vicious, she hadn't been able to run into the embrace she had been longing for in her dreams and her waking hours for almost a year.

Not only that, he hadn't been alone. He'd been walking with a tall, attractive woman with short purple hair that swung sassily wherever she turned her head. A voluptuous body had its essentials just barely covered by a skimpy yellow outfit that was really just two pieces of leather. Her eyes were green.

The woman looked absolutely nothing like Julia, and she smiled. They were also arguing. Julia had even begun laughing when the woman made a sharp remark about her former lover's fuzzy hair. That person seemed to her like someone she could get along with. Spike let the comment bounce off him with a wave of his hand and the lighting of a cigarette.

She couldn't really tell if he was happy or not. He seemed…focused but not upset. It was the best analysis she could come up with at that moment.

Content for now with just seeing him alive, Julia pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss in Spike's direction. As she was turning to walk away, she thought she saw through her peripheral vision Spike's eyes land on her. The crowd swelled and closed around her, preventing him from pursuing someone he most likely only half-believe was really her. She dodged people and ducked around corners with professional ease. Disappearing had become easy, even though her heart ached every time she was forced to do it.

This distance was her price to pay for love.


	5. Just An Idea

Slightly PG-13 for sexual references.

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Just An Idea

By Nessie

Theme #5: "Hey, you know…"

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She was standing by the window with a sheet wrapped around her slim, sexy form. Golden hair flowed down her back in rumpled waves that caught the light from a streetlamp outside, and she glowed.

Watching her from the bed, Spike thought she looked like an angel, or maybe a bride.

The second notion brought a smile to his face even while her clear ocean-blue eyes gleamed with doubt the way they always did right after they made love. She was always so scared that every second with her killed him a little more, despite Spike's repetitive assurances that he had never felt more alive than when they were together.

Smile still in place, he got up from the bed, mindless of his state of undress. Approaching her from behind, he dropped a chaste kiss to her shoulder, then a longer one to her neck.

He response was to breathe deeply, welcoming him to her side with life.

"Hey, you know…" Spike turned her roward him so that the light illuminated her silhouette. In that moment, her beauty was something that brought him to his knees. He felt his heart drop into her hands. "We could get married."

Her eyes turned downward the slightest bit, but she recognized the solemnity in his tone and answered gently. "We can't discuss that yet, Spike."

Julia buried herself into Spike's arms, hiding from him even as she drew closer.

_So when can we_, he wanted to ask. Instead, he said, "It was just an idea."

But as he kissed her, long and deeply and full of dreams, he imagined them in a church, not hiding and vowing themselves to each other – forever.


	6. So He Would Smile

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So He Would Smile

By Nessie

Theme #6: The Space Between Dream And Reality

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Edward fully understood that she was a child. And because Edward fully understood that she was a child, she didn't feel badly for not understanding the rest of the world like the grown-ups did. Ed took life as it came, whether she was staying at the Nun's place playing with other children or staying on the Bebop with Jet Friend, Spike Friend, and Faye-Faye. She took a certain amount of pride in that she knew more about computers than the three of them put together, and she gave what love she could to Ein, mostly because no one else did.

Ed _did _understand love, or at least she understood what she'd been given from the Nun and the Bebop crew that looked after her. She realized that must be some form of love. She thought there must be many different forms of love, like her love for computers and Jet Friend's love for his bonsai and Faye-Faye's love for gambling.

So whenever Spike Friend slept on the couch and he got to a point in his sleep that he stopped snoring loudly and just slept peacefully – like a tired kid, Ed had thought once – the name he always said three or four times in an hour must be from love too.

Ed watched Spike Friend sleep, his breathing slow, one of his feet on the floor while the other dangled over the arm of the couch. She wasn't a man and she wasn't a grown-up but in the light of her computer, she watched Spike Friend and knew that whatever he was dreaming about must be very manly and very grown-up-like things.

"Julia…"

Ed hugged her knees to her chest. She remembered pointing out the code 'Julia' to Jet Friend and Faye Faye when she'd seen it coming from the town of Blue Crow on Titan. Spike Friend had gotten into a fight with Jet Friend and left the Bebop, maybe to never return… All because of someone named Julia?

And there were days with Spike Friend never talked to anybody, least of all Ed, and he just smoked and stared out the window into space. He stopped wearing the smile that was always somehow a fake one and let all make-believe go. Smoke and stare. Smoke and stare. And somehow, despite her being a girl and despite her being a child, Ed knew that all of that smoking and staring was because Spike Friend wanted to find Julia.

Ed guessed that Spike Friend and Julia must have been very good friends once. Maybe they were even boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe they even kissed once.

Edward hoped he would find her, so he would smile again. And that if maybe Julia found Spike Friend, then Julia would smile too.

That would make Ed smile.


	7. What Julia Doesn't Know

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What Julia Doesn't Know

By Nessie

Theme #7: Superstar

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Wherever Spike goes, there are people who adore him. Mao thinks of him as the son he never had, Annie always manages to slip him another donut at the store, and Vicious has seen him as a brother for years. Spike is never without love.

She's watching him today, witnessing the marvelous show of admiration from the other Red Dragon agents. Older and younger men alike all look up to him. Lin and Shin cling to his every move. He has been placed on a pedestal he didn't build. And Julia watches as he rises to the top without any effort, whether he wants to or not. Her eyes are knowing.

She knows he dismisses it all as temporary. Something impermanent and for-now. Something that, as he grows older and grows weaker, will all be gone while the fame is passed down to someone else.

Spike smiles, lifts a hand, and presses his fingers to his lips. It is the only outward show of affection they can afford, the closest thing to a kiss they are allowed out in the open.

What Julia doesn't know is that she is the only thing Spike doesn't see as temporary.

For him, she is always.


	8. Desired Reality

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Desired Reality

By Nessie

Theme #8: Our Own World

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They were lost sometimes. They would be walking, and the streets of Tharsus would disappear to be replaced by something white and untouchable, something pure – the exact opposite of the black, mangled, corrupt lives they lead. That place they saw wasn't real. The world didn't disappear and become something that was theirs alone.

But they could always wish.

Perhaps it _was_ all just a dream. Perhaps the love, the comfort, every touch, and each kiss was nothing more than an illusion of those who desired reality.

The only thing Spike and Julia were sure of was that they wanted to be together when they woke up.


	9. The Very Same

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The Very Same

By Nessie

Theme #9: Dash

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Spike Speigel was an enigma Jet Black didn't particularly understand. As a former cop, Jet had a knack for identifying the thoughts beneath minds. But Spike was good at keeping himself shielded; Jet chalked that up to his partner's days in the syndicate, and whenever he tried to guess at what the Mars native was thinking, he felt like he was trying to pry into the mind of a chunk of space rock.

It came down to the irritating fact that it was impossible to predict was Spike would do at any given time. The man had, after all, up and ran off the ship despite threats of not being welcomed back just because of a woman's name. The only clue that the Bebop captain had to Spike was that he was constantly driven by someone named Julia. It was an ongoing race for a memory, someone who might as well be considered a phantom.

Jet understood that perfectly. The galaxy could be set on fire, and in the end it would come down to a woman.

And Spike was a perfect example of that. He was one of the liveliest people Black knew, and yet with each light of a cigarette or every sip of a drink, he could tell Spike wasn't thinking about bounty heads. Rather, he was living in memories of long-lost kisses and warm arms.

Yeah, Jet could understand that. Maybe Spike and he were just the very same after all.


	10. Hard Number

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Hard Number

By Nessie

Theme #10: 10

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Julia could never quite manage to keep her hands from trembling whenever it was time for her to change Spike's bandages. Scarlet blood as dark as his eyes washed freely over her hands, and she shuddered. It wasn't cleaning the wounds that bothered her. It was seeing them defacing her lover's body. Her heart clenched as though squeezed by a human fist.

She counted ten major injuries in all. Not included minor cuts and scrapes that also decorated him, there were several bullet wounds and impalements…and, of course, there was his right eye, now gone and replaced with a prosthetic that wouldn't quite match his left.

Ten was a hard number.

He was unconscious now, as he had been for three days, and he couldn't feel any of her actions in comparison to the overall pain he was enduring, but as she worked to make him more comfortable, he groaned. Through his dry lips, one syllable emerged:

"Jules…"

Her eyes welled quickly, but she brushed the tears away just as fast. Bending over, she placed a gentle, almost a breeze of a kiss upon his stitched forehead.

"I love you," she whispered.

Spike relaxed into a more restful sleep.


	11. Casual and Careful

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Casual and Careful

By Nessie

Theme #11: Gardenia

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He was angry. Angrier than he had expected to be when Vicious had asked where the single gardenia had come from, knowing the answer fully well.

Julia had replied that Spike had brought it over. Her reply had been casual – and careful. "He said my apartment needed livened up. I suppose he's right."

Vicious wondered how many times Spike had kissed her when he'd dropped off that gardenia.

Whatever the number, it was too many.


	12. He Wants To

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He Wanted To

By Nessie

Theme #12: In A Good Mood

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He is the most feared man in the Red Dragon syndicate and accepts the role without complaint. No one can do it better. As one who is rarely seen as more than a snake, Vicious has no need for emotions or feelings.

The only time he comes close to having moods is when he is near her. At first, she had made him happy. She had settled something inside of him, calmed him down. He had depended on her to feel something, anything…and he does that now.

But it has changed. Now she disrupts something within him. The need to maim or mangle arises inside of him every time her crystalline blue eyes meet with his coal-dark ones. Their eyes are like water meeting rock, and he thinks of waves shattering. Breaking her. Her hair makes him want to erupt and whenever he wraps it around his hand, he wants to pull and tug until it is his.

But it is her mouth that makes him explode. It makes him live up to his name, seizing her and fusing his cold lips to her warm, warm ones. He gives into a frenzy that awakes. He takes control, she becomes all his, and in the dark after it is all over, he apologizes. From the blackness. He kisses away Julia's tears.

And that's when Vicious is in a good mood.


	13. His Fault

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His Fault

By Nessie

Theme #13: Excessive Chain

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She always held back. Mao Yenrai could see them, twenty stories below, standing together in an alleyway across from the Red Dragon headquarters. Spike was holding her up to a brick wall, holding her like he might die if he was forced to let go.

But Julia, though pressed tightly to him, kept her hands on his shoulders rather than around his neck. She was like that every time, Mao thought, whether he saw them exchange a meaningful glance or he saw through their precautions to find them in a deeper expression.

Julia seemed to be the one who was afraid. That was natural. Spike didn't know when to fear. He never had.

Even so, it was a beautiful kiss.

Mao's old eyes creased further at the corners as he sadly smiled. Perhaps some of it was his fault. He kept such a tight leash on his agents that they too reached out to hold onto whatever they could get.

In the case of Spike and Julia, it was love they wanted. The problem was that Vicious wanted that same love, ultimately tangling their destinies. They were like three links in the same ever-shortening chain.

Mao stepped away from the window. He could only wish them happiness; he couldn't create it for them.


	14. At A Loss

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At A Loss

By Nessie

Theme # 14: Radio-cassette player

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Faye was always at a loss when it came to figuring out Spike. He never gave anything away. If she got close to asking about his past, his stomach would just rumble, right on cue, and he'd tell her to get him some food, and they'd fight, and the subject would be forgotten.

It wasn't fair. Spike and Jet had found a video tape that had revealed her past. Faye didn't even have so much as a magical radio or cassette-player that would show her anything abut Spike, even if it was only a boring kiss with a secret someone. That Julia maybe.

Faye knew one thing. She _would _find out his past someday. Somehow.


	15. Own The Sky

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Own The Sky

By Nessie

Theme: #15, Perfect Blue

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Freedom reminded Spike of blue. Looking around his own neighborhood on Tharsus, high-class though it was, little things that reflected thoughts of independence were usually blue. A child's blue kite that waved cheerfully in the breeze, a blue-collared dog that bounded happily ahead of its owner in a daily walk, the sky itself – massive in its liberty. After all, no one could own the sky.

He turned away from the window in his apartment and looked at the woman standing in his bedroom doorway. A steaming mug of coffee was between her hands, her goddess-like hair wavy and rumpled around her shoulders, and she wore an old T-shirt of his that only covered her from neck to mid-thigh.

She blew him a kiss and smiled at him, but it wasn't the upturn of lips that reached him. It was the color of her eyes, the blue of them. The perfect, perfect blue.

And the freedom that she gave him was more precious than any other thing in the world.


	16. The Very Thought of Him

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The Very Thought of Him

By Nessie

Theme #16: Invincible

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He was something untouchable to her. Though Julia had never met anyone friendlier than Vicious' friend Spike, no matter how far their attraction, currently in its early stages, eventually went, it would be as though they were separated by a thin pane of glass.

Spike had a destiny. It was whispered throughout the syndicate how he was fated to one day take over and how that day would be like a salvation. The very thought of him made one thing of an iron wall – completely unshakable, undefeated in its strength.

And with him so invincible, Julia couldn't help but feel weak.


	17. To Feel It

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To Feel It

By Nessie

Theme #17: Kilohertz

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The first time they kissed was the beginning of Spike's downfall. He'd been able to feel it. The wonderful reaction to her was almost punishing in its pleasure. It felt like a thousand electric jolts were working its way up his spine and to the rest of his body.

While it sounds like a good thing, electric jolts can kill a person. He can feel himself dying as he wraps his arms around her, he can feel the life leaving him. Perhaps it's because _she _is so truly alive…

But then Julia smiled at him, and Spike didn't care about dying.


	18. Enjoying Her Past

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Enjoying Her Past

By Nessie

Theme #18: Say "ahh…"

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Julia had a very good memory. And every so often, she could remember something that had absolutely no relevancy to any part of her life whatsoever. Mostly she was hit by such memories when she was doing something trivial.

This time, it wasn't trivial. She was driving in Callisto, heading into the city of Blue Crow and wondering where she would stash her car so that the Red Dragons wouldn't be able to trace it. She had just passed the beaten-up and rundown sign on the town border when she had an unbelievably clear vision of her mother, all flowing hair and smiling eyes, with a spoonful of mushy carrots in her hand, steering the food toward a much younger (three-year-old) version of herself. "_Say 'ahh,' Julia!"_

The ghost of a smile lifted a corner of her red lips. She used to tell Spike about those ridiculous memories. He would first laugh and maybe tease her a little. But he never took his turn in trying to find old and meaningless memories. She'd questioned it once and he had replied that he was enjoying her past a lot more than he had enjoyed his own.

But she had long ago kissed those times goodbye.

Maybe that particular vision of her mother was relevant after all. Her mother had fed her food. The syndicate, which she had been a so-called "child" of, had fed her only poison and lies and death to any kind of love she could possibly have had.

The smile fell. They were still trying to find her, so that they could feed her some more.

_Say "ahh_," Julia.


	19. Meant For Her

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By Nessie

Theme #19: Red

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The rose is dotted with raindrops as it freefalls to the pavement, landing in a puddle. His heart falls with it, becoming wet and cold with the splash. The deep, dark red of the petals makes it seem as though the flower is colored with his blood, dripping freshly from a newly-made wound.

"_We'll leave here."_

He walks away from her apartment. The cigarette he has lit drops from his hand, and he sees it is because his fingers are shaking. Spike knows it isn't from a lack of nicotine.

"_And go where? And do what?"_

"_Live…"_

It's from a lack of her. He can hardly feel the rain on him, although he is soaked through and heavy with it. That soaking might as well have been heartbreak in physical form, and the heaviness was from reality shattering down around him.

"_It'll be just like watching a dream."_

She had kissed him, drawn him into her slowly and deeply. If he had been paying attention, maybe he would have felt the farewell inside of her.

And now all he had was the soaking and the heaviness, and that image of a blood-drenched rose and a heart meant for her.


	20. Coming To Get You

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Coming To Get You

By Nessie

Theme #20: The Road Home

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"Spike! You need to pay more attention." Jet's voice crackles over the intercom on the Swordfish II and makes him sound even older than he is. In response, Spike exhales a thin stream of cigarette smoke and rests his head on the back of his pilot chair.

"I hear ya."

"I'm not kidding," growls the owner of the Bebop. "Your ship's too close to empty on fuel. If you get stuck in space, I'm not coming to get you."

Spike can just picture him, sitting by the communicator and tapping his bionic arm on the table in irritation. "Okay."

"And I don't like kiss-ups."

"But you're so wonderful," protests the ex-syndie with a goofy smile.

This isn't how it was supposed to be, coming home. Spike feels it, stronger than he usually feels anything. For starters, she's not there, and it's just an old man and a ship. It's not home he's coming to. It's a temporary shelter until he can find Julia.

Until he can find his home.


	21. Stones To Throw

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Stones To Throw

By Nessie

Theme #21: Violence; pillage/plunder; extortion

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He is dangerous by nature; growing up on the streets made him that way, and he still carried around a bit of those tough back alleys. He tends to face the world around him as though it is all one, big enemy that will kill him as soon as it gets the chance.

Maybe it will.

The way Julia sees it, there is always a threat in Vicious' black eyes, while Spike's garnet irises hold only a promise. The difference means the world to her. And her world is not an enemy, even though it is not exactly a friend.

To Vicious, Julia is nothing but a reward. He believes that he _earned _her in his fight against life, in his competition for ruling. He made it to the upper ranks of the Syndicate, didn't he? She is the bonus prize. He can pillage her body, he can plunder her mouth. He has extorted her heart. And he does it all with the subtle violence of the snake he is known to be. He strikes. He wins.

But only in his mind. The true champion has always been Spike, as though he were a boy with stones in his hand. Stones to throw at the snake.


	22. The Truest Things

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The Truest Things

By Nessie

Theme # 22: Cradle

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She was never allowed to be a child, he thinks. It's an odd thought to have, but it occurs even before the anger. And she never looked like a child to him. She was always a woman, fully-grown and ready for him, ready for life. But she always that of life as something inevitable. She _expected _tragedy.

Spike wonders, _Did you expect it for yourself?_

Love was something they both had craved for. He can see all the flashes of them reaching for each other with the risk of tearing themselves apart piece by piece if only they could have just a little of that preciousness. He had loved her with everything he was. He does still. And those last words

(Is it a dream?)

are the truest things ever to ring through his ears. And Spike has heard much.

They had shared that dream. Though she is lying there now, lying dead and awake like a tired child who could not pretend to be an adult anymore, the dream is still flowing through him like a stream of fading hope.

And her dreams were the place that Julia had loved him back. It doesn't matter now that she has filled his head with phantoms and whispers for three years. It doesn't matter that she is dead and he isn't.

Oh God, yes it does.

Spike pulls her to his chest with a fierce, sorrowful strength and clings to her as though if he holds her tightly enough she will return. Tears come and fall away, mixing in with the rain and wetting her cheeks, her eyelashes. A sound that he doesn't know tears from his throat, and he presses trembling lips to her still red, still warm ones. He squeezes his eyes shut, part of him waiting for her hand to touch the back of his neck, which had always been her way of inviting him.

There is no touch. There is only a young man reduced to tears and a dead woman cradled against him like a little girl.

Maybe she is starting over, right now. Maybe she is beginning to be that child.

But then the anger sets in. And Spike doesn't know.


	23. Just How Sweet

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Just How Sweet

By Nessie

Theme #23: Candy

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She's like candy. And he's like a little kid that has snuck into the goody bin and taken something that he's not supposed to have.

It's a twisted way to think about the situation, Spike admits, but the way they live is hardly anything less than crooked. Besides, he has a hard time finding any sense of rationality when she's pressed against him, drinking him in like a winter mug of hot chocolate and showing him just how sweet she can be.

A grin comes to his face as his back meets the wall. He's always had fast fingers, both with stealing and with women. But this particular woman has made him realize how important it is to be careful and to take it slow.

Julia's head falls back and she raises a playful eyebrow up at him. "What?"

"Nothing." Seizing her, they swivel and their places are switched. Now she's the one against the wall, and he's drinking her through with deep, thirsty kisses.

Oh yeah, she's like candy. One that's good for him.


	24. Because of the Song

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Because of the Song

By Nessie

Theme #24: Good Night

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She had appeared like a phantom, materializing through the fog of a cold moon and the smoke from cheap cigarettes. She was beautiful, hair shining like woven gold and eyes bluer than the wintry sky outside. Even so, she was so discreet and quiet that Gren would never have noticed her if she wasn't the first woman he had set eyes on in close to a year.

With practiced stealth, she had slipped in through the door and slid over to the corner barstool as though she did it every day. She ordered an amber drink that would burn a trail on its way down, and the whole time he kept on playing low notes that trembled in the air like heat. His eyes left never left her.

Gren went on with his set like he always did, but because she was something new, he played a new tune. Something he'd been given. Something he cherished. It almost hurt to breathe out the music.

One measure into the song, she had looked at him as though he had said something offending to her. But she was at the bar, and he was onstage. They couldn't touch each other, except through their gazes.

After the show, if it could be called a show when your audience was only a bunch of drunken men, she had met him in the alley outside and aimed a gun at his heart. Just because of the song. Gren thought he might not mind if this woman, this beautiful ghost-like angel, killed him. Maybe something good would come out of it.

But she didn't kill him. She accepted his offer of a place to stay, and he took her home.

Julia. Her name was Julia. She stretched out on the couch, and he gave her inexpensive wine, and her hair gleamed in the dim lighting, and they talked. She told him of Spike. The man with different-colored eyes. The man who gave you a strange feeling when you looked into those eyes.

She was so tired, he could see that. She'd been running, which was even clearer. Gren was moved by her somehow, even though everything about her said guard-up, and once she had drifted to sleep he couldn't resist a touching affection for her.

That first night of their meeting, Gren goodnight-kissed the sleeping Julia on the forehead, and wished for her dreams. Dreams of Spike. Dreams of that man she most deeply loved.

He had made a friend. Just because of the song.

_Goodnight, Julia_.


	25. Through The Diamonds

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Through The Diamonds

By Nessie

Theme #25: Fence

---------------------------------

Lin is outside for a quick smoke before going back into Annie's store where a meeting for his unit is taking place. With Vicious on Titan, he's had to suffer through a lot more meetings than usual.

He's about to turn and head to the door, but then he spots his role model walking along a half-empty street on the other side of a chain-link fence across the way. He takes a moment just to admire Spike for who he is and what he's capable of. He wants to be like him someday.

But then he sees that Spike isn't alone. He is walking with a golden-haired woman with an angel's face and realizes that it's Julia. They aren't doing anything, Lin observes with a smile. The lucky pair must have the day off, and they're taking a walk and talking and smoking, like him. It almost looks like they're just normal people, two friends out for a chat.

But they're not normal. None of them are.

Julia says something, and Spike laughs loudly. Lin can hear him from this far away. Spike's laugh is confident, and she must have been very funny. He's so delighted that he suddenly takes Julia by the wrist, spins her in a dizzying circle and kisses her.

Right in the street. Right in front of Lin.

His cigarette falls to the ground as Lin realizes that Spike and Julia are desperately, maddeningly in love.

In the next moment, he's terrified. Julia is, for all intents and purposes, _Vicious's_. And as far as he and anyone else had known, she wants to be. But that's all a lie now.

With the witness of one little kiss through the diamonds made by thin wires of steel, Lin understands that has betrayed them already.

It tears him up inside.


	26. In A Knot

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In A Knot

By Nessie

Theme #26: If Only I Could Make You Mine

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He's nothing but a vision, and she is only a daydreamer. It's funny because most people would think it was the other way around. But Julia knows the reality of things far better than Spike will ever be able to. While he grasps at butterflies, she's the one watching for wolves, and in the end one or both of them could still end up getting killed. They're always hunted, after all.

But because Julia sees reality sharply, she also sees the dreams more clearly even than him, and every time she wakes up, the blood spills a little faster and the knife digs a little deeper. But that's no reason to stop living or dreaming anyway.

Everything about him is gentle except for the way he holds her hand. He grips her hand tightly, not to the point of pain, but to the point of urgency. He laces his fingers through hers like he might try to bind them in a knot. He brushes her knuckles roughly. Julia wonders if that is the only way Spike believes he can truly hold onto her.

That's where the difference lies. Spike has always thought there is a way for him to keep her there. Julia knows better than to believe she can stay with him.

So when she slips out in the middle of the night, leaving him alone with tangled sheets and the warmth of a kiss he never felt, she knows it is what she has to do. She yearns for him. Her very breath is drawn for him. And it is for him that she does this, that she keeps living.

But it is for her that she demands that he live too. Maybe, if they do, they can eventually be together. The way he wants it. The way she wants it.

Belonging to each other.


	27. There Are Ways

**WARNING: **This particular drabble is rated **Mature **for lime content. Take heed, non-limers!

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There Are Ways

By Nessie

Theme #27: Overflow

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She fills him the way nothing else can. Food, drink, cigarettes, even a fight…all are a form of sustenance to him, but nothing truly sates him the way she does. And it doesn't have to be this way, with phantom embraces that will be gone as soon as they part and ghost-like kisses that breathe lust into the very core of his soul.

All he needs are her starry pools of her eyes, the pleasant curve of her smile, and he is conquered. She eases a restlessness in him with a cool press of her fingertips, and she steadies a racing heart with the graze of her teeth, but there are other means to tame him. Not that he can complain, because he knows that Julia needs this just as much as him.

Darkened corners, a rented bedroom, even the occasional back alley have served as past housing to their more physical displays of love. But his home is her arms, and though he sometimes feels as though he is trying to cage her, Spike understands that there is no possible way to really do so.

A drip of sweat. A pant of breath. A mindlessly-whispered "I love you" and it is finished, but not over. It is the fold of her arms, the warmth of bare skin that finally drives him to the edge and he overflows in ways that cannot be described by a human tongue. There are ways that people are brought to the top and rush over, returning only if they are able to.

Spike and Julia always come back.


	28. A Very Good Liar

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A Very Good Liar

By Nessie

Theme #28: Wada Calcium CD3

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Vicious doesn't ask too many questions, but when he does, it is usually so he can try to make it seem as though he actually cares about her. She doesn't know what the last time he really saw her was, only he's been pretending to notice her for a long time now. Even in bed, there is never any real sense of acknowledgement.

"You look healthy," he comments idly, stroking a finger over the back of her bare neck as he leafs through a newspaper reporting on a syndicate scheme. "What's your secret?"

Lying on her side with her back facing her, Julia allows herself the most imperceptible of smiles. The flame inside of her, the one that had been ignited before she met him, before Vicious had snuffed it out and was now back due to her recent secret relationship, urged her to tell him it was because she was having a healthy affair. But he still frightened her in ways nothing else could, and she instead clenched the sheets, fingernails digging into her palms through the soft linen.

"Annie gave me some vitamins," she tells him, tiredness adding a coat of nonchalance to her tone. "Calcium… You should try it." If nothing else, her time with Spike had made Julia a very good liar.

"Hm. But I've got all the nutrition I need." His one finger is joined by the rest of his hand, and she hears a rustle as the paper is cast aside. He turns her on her back, and her eyes shine in the gleam of his bedside lamp. "Don't I, Julia?"

He kisses her with lips that may as well be dead for how cold they are. Julia is currently addicted to warmth, to tenderness. Neither of these things is something that Vicious possesses, let alone give her.

But it's alright. Because although he doesn't know it, Julia too has been getting all of her nutrition.


	29. Wading Through

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Wading Through

By Nessie

Theme #29: The Sound of Waves

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He is trying to run to her but is being restrained. He is trying to find her but he can't see because of the salt in his eyes. It feels like a whole ocean is against him, holding him back with pounding splashes and imprisoning tides.

Making his way to her building goes slowly, as though he is wading through neck-high water, and his damp, heavy clothes are weighing him down. He calls her name but the roar of the crashing waves is too loud. He can't hear himself. He can't hear anything. All he has are droplets that kiss his chin, his eyelashes.

He breaks free for a brief moment and seizes his chance with mad abandon, breaking through the door like a robber. But he doesn't want to steal anything, all he wants to do is give, give forever. He can feel his waterlogged shoes squeaking on the stairs, which there are too many of, and the green and blue sea is rising fast. His hair is dripping, and he rubs water out of his eyes and sputters it out of his mouth as he bursts into her apartment.

The closets are empty, but the cabinets are full. She left quickly. Perhaps she wanted to beat the rain outside. Or maybe she just wanted to beat him.

Well, she succeeded. Spike feels beaten. He feels hit and broken as he leaves, half-stumbling back down the stairs. He is picked up by the tide, although there is no ocean. It is only rain that has made him so wet. And it is only life that is against him.

But he still can't hear anything. The sound of waves shuts out all of it. Even her voice.


	30. Rare and Unpredictable

**A/N:** I finished! Woohoo! I never thought I'd actually go through all of it and complete all thirty themes. But I'm very glad I challenged my endurance that way…they're so depressing to write for! Thank you to all who read/reviewed, and I hope you enjoyed reading these as much as I enjoyed writing them.

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Rare and Unpredictable

By Nessie

Theme #30: Kiss

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He has never seen such a thing so rare and unpredictable; a devil with a pool cue in hand leading an angel in skintight black leather through a dimly-lit, smoky bar. Thrown so effectively off-guard, Spike isn't sure if she looks perfectly belonging with her painted red smile or extremely out of place with her pure blue eyes and decides at the last second before she and his best friend approaches that it really doesn't make any difference. Not here, where the line between good and evil is little more than a tangled ball tossed in a corner somewhere.

Vicious smiles from beneath a fall of snowy hair that makes her own long tresses appear to be a river of sunshine that waves thickly over her shoulders. "I promised I would introduce me to my new friend, Spike," says the devil with a smile. "This is Julia."

Julia. A deceptively common name without a trace of unusualness to it. Spike knows better. It is the normal that one should guard against.

He lets her in anyway.

"Mr. Speigel," she begins, her voice like the bottom notes of a harp. Again, deceptive.

"Just Spike," he assures her. "Vicious has bragged about you too much for any sort of formality."

Her grin is quick, and his blood pressure rises at the sight of it. "All I hear are warnings about you," she tells him laughingly. "Spike."

He takes her hand, feels the moderate temperature of it before bending low. "And that he should." He presses a gentlemanly kiss to the back of her hand before sending his own crooked grin up to her amused face. "I'm a dangerous guy."

And if the hundreds of thousands of reactions his body, mind, and soul have to a kiss to her hand alone. Spike knows right away that she is a dangerous girl.

A week later, he and Julia are alone, and this time the kiss is far more intimate.

And both of them understand that the danger is well worth all of it. There has never been a thing so rare and unpredictable.


End file.
